


portrait without grey felt hat

by kitseybarbours



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art Museums, Artist Ben, First Meetings, Fluff, Journalist Hux, M/M, Soft Kylux™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-24 00:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7486650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/pseuds/kitseybarbours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, do you ask every stranger you meet if you can draw their picture?” Hux asks, sounding coyer than he’d meant to. He looks pointedly at Ben and smiles to see him look up, startled, his dark eyes widening slightly.</p><p>
After his initial surprise Ben recovers quickly. He hesitates a moment, pencil quivering above the page, and then responds with a little grin — “Only the cute ones,” he flirts back shyly.</p>
<p>
“The ones who look like works of art?” Hux teases.</p>
<p>
Ben nods, his smile widening across his face and taking a blush with it. “You got it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	portrait without grey felt hat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bygoneboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/gifts).
  * Translation into Français available: [Portrait Sans Chapeau De Feutre Gris](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7886446) by [Silivrenelya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silivrenelya/pseuds/Silivrenelya)



> A very small birthday fic for my dearest darling [Mak](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/)! He requested Kylux meeting in an art museum, and I do hope I've delivered. Enjoy your Forbidden Soft™, my dude, and the happiest of birthdays to you!!! ❤︎ ❤︎ ❤︎

*

“This one looks like you.”

At first, Hux doesn’t register that the man is speaking to him. He knows the gallery is almost empty, but, wrapped up in contemplation of the portrait, he subconsciously dismisses the unfamiliar voice and carries on looking at the painting, unperturbed. He’s dimly aware that the man receives no reply.

After a moment: “He looks like you.” The same voice again, closer now, at his side. Hux frowns, startled: someone _is_ speaking to him after all. He turns, mildly dazed, and finds a man at his elbow, tall and dark with long hair piled loosely in a bun. He has a jutting nose, large eyes, a full mouth — and Hux has never seen him before in his life.

“I’m sorry?” he asks quietly. The museum map crinkles in his hands.

The stranger gives a shy, crooked, toothy smile. “Van Gogh.” He gestures to the painting Hux had been looking at: _Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat,_ Van Gogh, 1887 _._ “He looks like you. Or you look like him.”

The man isn’t Dutch, Hux can tell that for sure — his accent is American without being jarring. A tourist, then, like Hux. The Rijksmuseum is quiet right now, late afternoon on a drizzly April Tuesday; unusually, they are alone in this gallery but for a woman who talks softly in German to the baby strapped to her chest, and the pleasant-faced, turban-wearing security guard at the door.

“Does he? Or — do I?” Hux asks, flustered. He steps slightly back from the portrait and peers at it, his cheeks flushing: he can feel the man watching him intently as he studies it. Hux bites his lip. “I can’t tell.”

“Trust me,” the man assures him. He gives another smile: gentle and awkward, as if he’s not used to it. He hesitates slightly. “I — I wanted to ask.” He clears his throat, and then interrupts himself: “Well, first of all, I’m glad you aren’t Dutch, or French or Swedish or something, because then I couldn’t talk to you — and I wanted to ask…” He cuts off his sudden babble shyly. “Could I draw you?”

Hux blinks. “Draw me?”

The man nods. He holds up a sketchbook that Hux only now notices has been tucked under his arm, along with a tin of drawing pencils. “I’m an art student. I come to the museum and draw the artworks sometimes, or else the people I see.” He looks at Hux almost apologetically. “With their permission, obviously. Would that be — all right?”

Hux has never been asked to be _drawn_ before. He’s not really sure what the protocol is, or if there is one. He looks around: the German woman and her baby have disappeared, and the guard at the door stands with his hands folded behind his back, his gaze fixed high on nothing in particular.

He looks back at the American man. He nods: “Yes, it would.”

A grin splits wide the man’s heavy-featured face. “Great! Awesome. Thank you!” he enthuses, all sheepishness gone. “Oh, man, I was hoping you’d say yes.”

Hux smiles back, flattered and surprised. “So, er — what do I do?”

“Just sit on the bench there,” the man tells him, gesturing, “and I’ll do the rest.”

Hux sits. He sets his leather bag at his side, takes the Nikon from around his neck. He sits statue-still as the American gets set up: he takes a seat, cross-legged, on the floor, his lanky, hulking frame made suddenly childlike. His sketchbook he opens to a fresh page and folds over; his pencils he lays in their tin on the floor. He looks up at Hux.

“Look at me,” he requests simply. Hux turns his head a little. “Chin down. To the left a bit more. Eyes up. There,” the American directs him. He nods, satisfied. “Don’t worry about your hands, just relax them. Your legs too. I’ll only do your shoulders up.”

Not sure how to relax on command, Hux crosses his legs at the ankle and tucks them beneath the bench, and rests his hands in his lap, feeling posed although being told to do the opposite. “Is this okay?” From the corner of his eye he sees the security guard look at them, and feels his face grow warm again.

The American nods. “Great. Stay like that.”

“All right.”

The American bends over his pencil tin. He picks one out with deft fingers, holds it up to inspect it, and nods; and then he begins to draw.

His hand moves quickly, flying across the page. The sketchbook is tilted towards him, away from Hux, so he can’t see the drawing taking shape; he can only see the American glancing up at him, and glimpse, in his peripheral vision, his hand describing motions on the page. He imagines the drawing that’s being created. _What if it’s not good?_ Hux thinks for the first time, keeping his eyes fixed where he’s been told to. But he dismisses the thought at once: _It doesn’t matter. This is…nice._

“So where are you from?” the American asks him, his eyes flicking up to catalogue some other feature of Hux’s, and then down to his page to transcribe it. “England, I’m guessing?”

“I live just outside of London,” Hux answers, trying to move his mouth as little as he can. “I was born in Ireland, though.”

“That explains the red hair,” the American says, cracking a grin. “And don’t worry, you can talk, it’s fine,” he assures him. “I always try and draw people’s mouths first, to be nice. Keep us both entertained.”

“Thanks,” Hux says, his face relaxing just slightly. “What about you? Where are you from?”

“San Francisco,” the American answers promptly. “But my cousin and I have moved out here for the summer. She’s a photographer, and her new exhibition’s opening soon — well, tonight, actually — and it goes for a month or two. I’m off school, so I decided just to come with her.”

“Artistic family,” Hux comments. He shifts minutely in his pose to scratch an itch on his thigh. “Have you been to Amsterdam before?”

“First time. You?” The American looks up at him and narrows his eyes for a moment, scrutinising some detail or other before bending over the paper again.

“Mine too,” Hux says. “I’m a journalist. I was reporting on the opening of a restaurant, but I finished the piece early, so today I’m just exploring.”

“How was it?”

“What?”

“The restaurant.”

“Awful,” Hux tells him promptly. The American looks up and gives a surprised laugh.

“Really?”

Hux starts to nod and then stops himself, flushing guiltily. The American waves a hand — “You’re fine,” he smiles.

“Yeah, it was awful,” Hux repeats, nodding now. “Some sort of molecular-gastronomy nightmare, as seems to be the rage these days; but somehow even worse than usual.” He wrinkles his nose at the memory.

“I can only imagine.” The American nods solemnly.

They lapse back into silence for a while. From where he sits, Hux still has an excellent view of the van Gogh self-portrait; he goes back to studying it, feeling like van Gogh’s eyes are fixed on him, judging him, now that he’s being compared to him. He supposes he can see the similarities — his eyes are also a changing sea-green; his hair, too, gleams coppery red; he’s let his beard grow a little these past couple days —

“You’re even dressed like him,” the American says, breaking the silence as if reading Hux’s thoughts.

Hux starts. “I am?” He looks down at his clothes — a cream-coloured Oxford shirt under a dark-blue wool pullover — and then back up at the painting. Van Gogh wears a blue jacket, white shirt, and cream-coloured cravat. A not-unpleasant shiver runs down Hux’s spine. He says in disbelief, “God, I am, too, aren’t I?”

The American man gives another wide and bashful grin. “All you need is the hat.” He ducks his head again, shading something in. “Although you look pretty perfect without,” he comments, a little quieter, as if Hux weren’t supposed to overhear.

Hux bites his lip and feels his face grow warm yet again. The American keeps sketching, oblivious, and Hux looks at him intently, trying to decipher his thoughts as the other man had apparently done his. “What’s your name?” he asks, suddenly realising that he doesn’t know.

Without looking up from the page the American says, “Ben Solo. What’s yours? Gotta look out for your byline,” he adds, and Hux can hear the smile in his voice.

“Brendon Huxley. Call me Hux, if you’d like,” Hux offers.

“Nice to meet you, Hux,” the American — Ben — says sincerely, looking up at him again.

“You too, Ben.” Hux smiles, although Ben has already looked away. After another few minutes of silence, he speaks up again, made brave.

“So, do you ask every stranger you meet if you can draw their picture?” Hux asks, sounding coyer than he’d meant to. He looks pointedly at Ben and smiles to see him look up, startled, his dark eyes widening slightly.

After his initial surprise Ben recovers quickly. He hesitates a moment, pencil quivering above the page, and then responds with a little grin — “Only the cute ones,” he flirts back shyly.

“The ones who look like works of art?” Hux teases.

Ben nods, his smile widening across his face and taking a blush with it. “You got it.”

Hux smiles.

They lapse back into silence, but it’s different now: more intimate, somehow. Hux allows his thoughts to wander, and his gaze, too, moving from the portrait to rove over the other paintings in the room before landing back on Ben’s bowed head.

He’s handsome, in a strange way, his heavy features and Gothic-dark hair at odds with his voice (deep, but soft, awkward still), and the various beauty marks constellated over his skin. His hands, one holding the pencil and the other keeping the sketchpad balanced on his knees, are large and calloused, but their movements are purposeful and somehow kind, seeming to revere everything they touch. His gaze, when it comes up to rest on Hux’s face again, is the same.

“Done,” Ben announces after a few more minutes, his eyes crinkling with his smile. He signs the drawing with a quick scribble and then sets his pencil back in the tin and stands, holding up the sketchbook: “Would you like to see?”

“Of course.”

Hux breaks his pose and moves to Ben’s side. Ben tilts the sketchbook so Hux can see, and Hux gives an audible intake of breath when he sees the drawing.

“Is that really what I look like?” is his first reaction.

Ben nods, lowering his eyes with boyish reticence. “Uh-huh.”

“Jesus.” Hux studies the portrait in disbelief. “It’s — amazing. It looks just like him.” He glances up at the van Gogh again, and then back down at Ben’s sketch.

“Like you,” Ben corrects him.

“Yeah. Yeah. Both, I guess,” Hux answers, dazed and profoundly shaken by the flattery. _“God._ You really know what you’re doing.”

And it’s true, Ben does. In careful, beautiful pencil strokes, he has captured something of van Gogh’s trademark intensity, while simultaneously making the style unique, his own. The drawing’s eyes — Hux’s eyes — are alight with an intelligence that is different from the hard mournful look of van Gogh’s portrait, but that is expressed with just as much emotion and skill. Hux shakes his head. “Thank you.”

“Would you like to keep it?” Ben offers.

“Well — yes, actually — but here.” Hux opens his bag and begins to fumble in it for his wallet. But Ben touches his arm lightly and stills it.

“You don’t need to pay me,” he tells him. “Well, actually —” He pauses, his tongue darting out to sweep over his full bottom lip, and gives a small, embarrassed smile. “You don’t have to do this either, but, well, Rey’s exhibition opens tonight, and my invitation includes a plus-one. I didn’t bring a guest to Amsterdam, so maybe you’d like to…?”

“I’d love to,” Hux answers. Their eyes meet and he smiles at Ben. “But only if I can take you to dinner first,” he adds.

Ben’s eyes widen with terribly endearing surprise. “Sure,” he replies, giving another little grin — and now his face takes on a mischievous look. “As long as it’s not at the restaurant you reviewed.”

Hux laughs. “I promise you it won’t be. I mentioned in my review, actually” — he raises his eyebrows — “that it’s absolutely no place for a date.”

Ben ducks his head, smiling. “I’m relieved to hear that.”

With extreme care he tears the drawing out of his sketchbook and hands it to Hux, who takes it with equal respect. Ben sees him hesitating, not wanting to fold it up and risk smudging it, and at once takes an elastic off his wrist: “Here.” Hux smiles gratefully and rolls up the drawing, finding room for it in his bag and fervently hoping it doesn’t get squashed.

“What time is the opening?” he asks suddenly.

“Starts at eight,” Ben says, prompt but apprehensive. Hux checks his watch — it’s just past noon.

Ben says nothing, apparently waiting for Hux to say something, to make the first move. And so he does: Hux looks up and suggests easily, “What would you say to lunch as well as dinner?”

Ben’s sweet crooked grin appears again. “I think I’d say yes.”

Hux cocks his head to the door. “Shall we?”

They leave the gallery. As they pass, the security guard catches Hux’s eye and twinkles at him. He gives Hux a thumbs-up, unseen by Ben; Hux flashes one right back, grinning.

On the threshold, Hux stops and looks back one last time at van Gogh’s self-portrait, and he thinks, _Thank you._

*

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's](http://vangoyourself.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Self-portrait-with-grey-felt-hat-844x1024.jpg%20) the painting. Petition to have Domhnall play van Gogh, anyone? ;)
> 
> Anyway: this is very definitely un-beta'ed, not to mention written in about a week, in assorted Northern European capital cities, at very odd hours and on various trains — all this to say that any mistakes/inaccuracies are my own, and I apologise!
> 
> Come say hi on my [main blog](http://abernathae.tumblr.com/) or my [Star Wars blog](http://huxes.tumblr.com/), and go wish [Mak](http://bygoneboy.tumblr.com/) a happy birthday while you're at it ❤︎


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